France Flew First MQ-9 Flight

The flight, which lasted two hours, was intended for the handling of the vector, and the sensor, a crew consisting of two pilots operators with experience on the French UAV systems. This first flight comes complete theoretical and practical training for a period of five weeks and 5 hours of flight simulator.

The White Paper identified four principles for our future Army model that underlie the choice of equipment provided by the military planning law. The first of these principles is the strategic autonomy is to allow France to have his freedom of decision and action. To meet this requirement, the law provides for capacity building for the (medium altitude long for example, delivery of endurance drones - MALE) initiative taken in simple and probable operations, including developing intelligence.

This is why Bill programming provides a unique effort in the areas of intelligence aimed, inter alia, the acquisition of 12 MALE UAV type Reaper .

Delivery of the first two vectors and a ground station is planned after the end of the year. So that the air force will be able to implement them as soon as possible, three crews of the squadron of drones 1/33 "Belfort" of the 709 Air Base Cognac are currently training at Holloman Air Force Base . Other crews must make their first flight soon.
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